What Pets should Blizz make tamable?

[SpiritBinder]

They kept the cloud serpents out because like other dragons, they're sentient beings. We don't tame sentient beings.

I'd really love cloud serpents to be tamable too

And as far as I can tell, never have cloud serpents been called dragons within their lore (Unless you can point me to something I missed?). And as for what blizzard seems to classify them as, they are beasts for the most part, even Yu'lon is classified a beast. Also in the past when a Dev was asked about the mislabeling of the cloud serpents in the Beta of MOP, we were told.. "No, they are not Dragons, they are beasts and will remain classified as such"

There are already cases of cloud serpents used as pets/minions by Mogu, but possibly in these cases they look more to be subjugated/twisted, rather that a tamed hunter pet/companion. So not sure if that's the best testimony that they MUST be tamable, but it does show some level of at least being able to work in a similar setup in a combat capacity. And Cloud serpents have also been seen to pair up/bond with players to help as mounts. So putting the two together could be doable from a logistical stand point.

Also taking the sentient thing on bored, sure you could say that Yu'lon is clearly a sentient being thus cloud serpents are too, but then should the same not also be applied to all cranes and tigers?

For myself with the information provided from blizzard thus far, I've always seen cloud serpents in a similar vein to Gryphons, Wyvern and Hippogirff. While not tamable by a hunter (For the time being ), they're still beasts and not something that you can generally sit down and have a chat with.

[Castile]

I'd like for the glitched and different skins to be tameable - and not by some trick way but just normally cause they look different. Like the oil stained woves and sha touched animals. No buffs or special abilities just the different look

I've always missed the boat for special pets (apart from the grubs) so I think it would be neat of everyone could get them. I'm sure they'd be some special snowflakes that want them to be special and i guess I understand that too but id really love an oil wolf or sha tiger lol!

[Wain]

Sentience has always been a tricky subject in WoW. Clearly powerful beings in beast shape are not going to be representative of the species, and that goes for both the Celestials of Pandaria and the Ancients we met in Hyjal.

But even in truly beastly creatures the level of sentience seems to vary with plot requirements, rather than any hard and fast rule. Companions of storyline characters can exhibit more character and intelligence than you might expect, because it makes for fun plot. In Tanaris we met a turtle who told us he had to get home to his (rather horrible, it turns out) wife. It was silly but made for a very fun quest. But then, maybe he and his wife were meant to be lesser powers in turtle form or something. That certainly wasn't established.

In cloud serpents I'm not aware of any regular ones that exhibit higher levels of sentience. The Pandaren harvest their eggs (which they seem to happily drop wherever) and train them to be mounts. Other than that they seem to fly about and eat things and not much else. I'd be genuinely interested to know of anything that proves otherwise, though (and by that I mean creatures in the game, not Pandaren legends and stories that we are told).

I'm not saying cloud serpents would make good pets. I honestly have reservations. But I'm not sure sentience would be a barrier. From their colony structure, I would expect that silithid colossi would be more sentient if anything.

[Azunara]

At this point my biggest issue with Cloud Serpent is if you scale them down, they'd look absolutely terrible. I don't think they'd have a good animation either. See the arcane serpents if you want an example. They just don't seem feasible mechanics wise. There'd be a lot of weird clipping, buggy movements, etc, etc. and I'd rather see those resources hammered out into fixing already broken pets that are tamable/creating new pets that aren't weird/buggy.

[Qraljar]

With what you mentioned, Azu. I wonder if a someone experienced with it could possibly alter the netherdragon.m2 skeleton (mana serpent, the one we can tame) and put the Cloud Serpent model on it. Hmh..

[Azunara]

@Qraljar

Actually, it seems to me a lot of the cloud serpent animations are already based on the mana serpent, hence my hesitation. If you look at both of them curled up and moving, it seems very similar to me if I remember correctly. I do think they have different attack animations, but otherwise they're already very similar--I just know a lot of people find the current mana serpent animations to be rather unimpressive, if I remember right. I could, however, be wrong.

[Qraljar]

@Qraljar

Actually, it seems to me a lot of the cloud serpent animations are already based on the mana serpent, hence my hesitation. If you look at both of them curled up and moving, it seems very similar to me if I remember correctly. I do think they have different attack animations, but otherwise they're already very similar--I just know a lot of people find the current mana serpent animations to be rather unimpressive, if I remember right. I could, however, be wrong.

I'm asking because the main reason I could give for Cloud Serpents to be unfit as pets is because they're way too long and straightened-out in most animations.


I figure if they looked more like this: (position/pose-wise)




They'd take up less horizontal space, and they would be able to be quite a bit larger, because their size wouldn't make them as much of a hindrance as if they had their normal animations. Oh, and they'd invoke more of that mystical chinese dragon vibe to me. Don't ask me why, though. :p



Clarification: With mana-serpent, I don't mean the little wyrms, but the protodragon.m2 ones. The ones that we can tame as serpents:

[Lupen202]

Well, their idle ground animation is curled up a bit as is. And both the mana serpents and cloud serpents straighten out as they move, so if we were getting them as pets, keeping their current skeleton as long as they're small enough would work just as well I'd think. The change to the mana serpent skeleton wouldn't be a huge difference, that is.

Would be pretty easy to fit them into the serpents family, at least.

But I'd be really surprised if we got them as pets, as epic as they would be.

[Qraljar]

Well, their idle ground animation is curled up a bit as is. And both the mana serpents and cloud serpents straighten out as they move, so if we were getting them as pets, keeping their current skeleton as long as they're small enough would work just as well I'd think. The change to the mana serpent skeleton wouldn't be a huge difference, that is.

Would be pretty easy to fit them into the serpents family, at least.

But I'd be really surprised if we got them as pets, as epic as they would be.

While swirlyswirly, the current cloud serpent takes up quite a lot of space horizontally, while the mana serpent is quite compact and curled up in a circle.







Though the mana serpent isn't perfect either. While I'm not sure, though, I do think they could port the cloud serpent model to the netherdragon.m2 (mana serpent model name) skeleton. Though EVEN IF it is possible, I'm fairly sure we'd get issues with the talons/limbs. Even if the rest moves, the mana serpent has no bones at all for limbs because.. well, it has no limbs. And without limbs animated, it doesn't even just make them flop up and down uselessly, it just makes them hang there, solid like a rock, doing nothing. So yeah, that's one problem they could run into, I suppose, if they ever intended to do anything like this.


It's just a hypothetical, of course.

[Azunara]

Oh, I see what you mean now! Yeah, you're right they do take up a lot of room both stretched out and moving and while idling. Trying to make it work on the mana wyrm model would be rough--the lack of limbs is definitely an issue, and cloud serpents have a lot of fidgety bits that mana wyrms don't--IE the nose tendrils, the tail tends to be way more animated, etc.

[Qraljar]

Oh, I see what you mean now! Yeah, you're right they do take up a lot of room both stretched out and moving and while idling. Trying to make it work on the mana wyrm model would be rough--the lack of limbs is definitely an issue, and cloud serpents have a lot of fidgety bits that mana wyrms don't--IE the nose tendrils, the tail tends to be way more animated, etc.

Yes, at that point, with that much effort, it would be way quicker and less intensive to just create a second new idle animation that has the Cloud Serpent curl up much more like in the chinese dragon art.

[Wain]

They do look good next to the mogu on shanze-dao and the two do seem to have a kind of hunter-pet relationship (even if the serpents were corrupted to that). But even thn they're probably bigger than you'd want a pc pet.

[Lisaara]

They kept the cloud serpents out because like other dragons, they're sentient beings. We don't tame sentient beings.

I'd really love cloud serpents to be tamable too

And as far as I can tell, never have cloud serpents been called dragons within their lore (Unless you can point me to something I missed?). And as for what blizzard seems to classify them as, they are beasts for the most part, even Yu'lon is classified a beast. Also in the past when a Dev was asked about the mislabeling of the cloud serpents in the Beta of MOP, we were told.. "No, they are not Dragons, they are beasts and will remain classified as such"

There are already cases of cloud serpents used as pets/minions by Mogu, but possibly in these cases they look more to be subjugated/twisted, rather that a tamed hunter pet/companion. So not sure if that's the best testimony that they MUST be tamable, but it does show some level of at least being able to work in a similar setup in a combat capacity. And Cloud serpents have also been seen to pair up/bond with players to help as mounts. So putting the two together could be doable from a logistical stand point.

Also taking the sentient thing on bored, sure you could say that Yu'lon is clearly a sentient being thus cloud serpents are too, but then should the same not also be applied to all cranes and tigers?

For myself with the information provided from blizzard thus far, I've always seen cloud serpents in a similar vein to Gryphons, Wyvern and Hippogirff. While not tamable by a hunter (For the time being ), they're still beasts and not something that you can generally sit down and have a chat with.

You could if they're old enough, since more than Yu'lon was shown capable of speech. Also it is not required to be able to talk to be an intelligent being.

http://wowpedia.org/Cloud_serpent

It's worth noting, cloud serpents are called Storm Dragons as well...so they are classified as a real dragon. They live in a delicate balance with nature and while most cannot speak, they are shown to have intelligence and are based off of the Lung Dragon/Chinese Dragon. These creatures are also a symbol of hope for the Pandaren people. Pretty sure they would not be too keen on us screwing up their land's balance more than we already have.

I also refer you to my argumentative paper I wrote about dragons being tamable. It's in the WoW General section. ^_^

[Wain]

You could if they're old enough, since more than Yu'lon was shown capable of speech. Also it is not required to be able to talk to be an intelligent being.

The only ones I'm aware of are manipulated or special ones. If the ones we train as mounts were capable of speech I'm sure we would be aware of it.

It's worth noting, cloud serpents are called Storm Dragons as well...so they are classified as a real dragon.

This is actually not proof, on several accounts.

"Storm Dragons" was a term used in a single quest and referred to a lightning version. If it was a general term for cloud serpents we would surely have seen it used elsewhere. But even if the word "dragon" was used in a common term for them, it wouldn't prove they are dragons. Their regular name has "serpent" in it but they're clearly not serpents either. Any more than Dragon Turtles are dragons, or Dragonhawks are either dragons or hawks.

But the final word goes to Ghostcrawler, who said in a Tweet:

@Ghostcrawler Hey GC, my friend keeps saying the cloud serpents arent dragons. Are they considered dragons in WoW lore?

@kuzanagi2010 we named them what we did to leave it nebulous. They aren't part of the whole Aspects scene.

In other words Blizzard has very deliberately steered away from either defining them as dragons or saying they aren't related to dragons. Anyone is welcome to have their own theories, but there is no proof either way for the simple reason that Blizzard intends for there to be no proof either way.

So feel free to believe they are or aren't dragons, but nobody will be able to prove their position.

But, either way, I don't see them becoming pets

[Zulmalakhan]

pterrorwings/skyscreamers and baby raptors/compys are a must for any dino lover.

P.S. it would be nice to tame small pack/horde/swarm pets it would be awesome to have a pack of compys or a swarm of fireflies acting as one pet